


All I Need

by AtropaAzraelle (Polyoxyethylene)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Celebrations, M/M, World of Ruin, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 04:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18328331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyoxyethylene/pseuds/AtropaAzraelle
Summary: Ignis and Iris do the best they can to get things together for Gladio's birthday.





	All I Need

“He will come, won't he?” Ignis wasn't sure if Iris was asking the question to fill the silence, or to have Ignis soothe her fraying nerves on the matter. Their tiny apartment smelled of warm cake and furniture polish, and her footsteps around the lounge sounded like she was pacing.

“He promised,” Ignis answered. That was enough for him. Gladio had never, ever failed to come through on a promise.

He'd called Gladio a week ago, finally catching Gladio outside of a reception blackspot and managing to speak to him in person, to check he was coming home. Gladio had been hesitant. “Thing is, Iggy, we're swamped. Lost another two hunters yesterday and now border patrols are on fourteen hour shifts. We can't spare another body.”

“I'll speak to Monica about prioritising reinforcements for you,” Ignis had answered. “Please? I want to spend the time with you.”

Gladio had sighed down the phone, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “And I want to spend it with you,” he replied. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Ignis had whispered, feeling the distance between them like an ache in his chest. When he'd lost his sight he'd come to rely on all the minute physical ways that Gladio had showed his affection. There was the way Gladio's hand lingered at Ignis's back, and the way their thighs brushed so casually under a table. Gladio leaned in to talk closer to Ignis's ear, his voice growing softer and more intimate even when they were discussing the weather, and at night Ignis never slept without a heavy arm resting on him.

Gladio's absence was the absence of all those things, and it became unbearable. Seven years of perpetual darkness had robbed the world of so much, and it had robbed Ignis of Gladio's reassuring presence.

“Promise me you'll come?” Ignis asked.

“If someone can relieve me,” Gladio began, “all the daemons in the world wouldn't stand in my way.”

The first order of business, then, had been to convince Monica to send that relief up to Meldacio. It had been a minor logistical nightmare. There weren't enough hunters anywhere to keep any single location truly safe. Ignis had spent the day going through their limited resources and allocations with her, taking into account the need for rest breaks, and together they managed to scrape together two hunters to go to Meldacio.

With Gladio's attendance assured, the next matter of importance was a birthday cake. Between them, Iris and Ignis managed to keep their fridge and larder stocked, but things like sugar were in extremely short supply. It ended up costing them a stack of garula steaks for just enough sugar to bake one small cake. When they were presented with the offer Ignis wasn't sure it was worth it; cake wasn't high on Gladio's list of favourite foods, but Iris insisted.

“We can't just not have a cake.”

“I'm sure he'd understand,” Ignis had pointed out, quietly. It was hardly going to be the celebration Gladio deserved in any case, and every disappointment and difficulty only seemed to compound that further. 

“Well he shouldn't have to,” Iris answered, firmly, before handing over almost a month's worth of hunting efforts in exchange for a small bag of sugar. “I'll make them back,” she reassured Ignis, turning away from the vendor and securing their hard earned ingredient in her bag. Ignis heard her double checking the clasp.

“The cup noodles might cost more,” Ignis pointed out. The factories weren't exactly open for business. Since they'd closed, cup noodles had been rendered all but extinct, merely a fond memory of their erstwhile customers, alongside Ebony coffee. The bright side for cup noodle fans was that they had a much longer shelf life than most products, so some remained in larders across the continent.

“We'll manage,” Iris replied. She'd grown up so much in the intervening years since Ignis had last laid eyes on her. She'd been a skinny fifteen year old then, with a short skirt and big boots. Her voice hadn't changed, but it came from higher up now she'd grown the last few inches of puberty, and her footsteps were heavier. The times that Ignis had put his arms around her, in consolation or celebration, he'd found her to be broader and fuller than he'd ever imagined. Hunting had thickened her arms and lent her an unexpected strength reminiscent of her brother. Ignis tried to picture her sometimes, mentally superimposing an image of Gladio as a young teen over his memory of Iris but it always seemed to fall short of what little he could discern from the way she moved, and spoke, and hugged.

They'd only managed to secure the noodles the day before Gladio's expected return. Two whole cups had cost them nearly as much as the sugar. They had sufficient behemoth loin that Ignis would be able to cook a decent steak, but vegetables were as hard to come by as sugar sometimes and they only had some from a can for that. It wasn't going to be the feast Ignis had imagined throwing for Gladio, but the effort involved had become nearly as monumental.

Monica had confirmed Gladio's relief had been sent up to Meldacio the day before, too, but the signal tower near to Meldacio had been attacked again and they were currently unable to communicate. Ignis hoped the communication delay wouldn't prevent Gladio from leaving on time. The cake and noodles would wait a few days if required, but it wouldn't be the same.

Especially if they were unable to even contact Gladio. The very notion brought contingency plans of commandeering a vehicle and driving up to Meldacio to meet Gladio there. It was ridiculous, of course, and could potentially leave Lestallum as strapped for defences as Gladio had feared Meldacio to be, but they were already short two attendees, and Ignis wasn't prepared to accept another.

While Ignis had baked, asking Iris to double and triple check his precisely weighed ingredients, Iris had gone into a flurry of cleaning and tidying. Ignis would have worried about that, or been offended at the implication that he didn't keep a clean enough house on his own, but he knew that was the furthest thing from Iris's mind. She needed to keep herself busy so the nerves didn't get the better of her, just as he did. Ignis smelled the furniture polish being used to remove every trace of dust from the apartment, imagining it leaving the surfaces shiny as if the furniture was new instead of comprising a years old accumulation of hand me downs and reclamations. Iris moved around the apartment with the sound of pillows being plumped, floors being swept, and picture frames being rearranged.

Ignis sometimes forgot about those. He couldn't see them, so to him they were rectangles of glass and metal adrift in a sea of flat surfaces he never had cause to explore. To Gladio, however, they were precious mementos of people and times before the scourge had wrought its ruin. Iris had told Ignis there was one of himself and Gladio at some petrol station, smiling for the camera, and another of them with Prompto and Noct posing at the Lestallum overlook. There was also one of Iris and Gladio's parents; Ignis suspected that was the one tucked away in a corner of the room. He'd find Gladio there on occasion, so still that only his breathing gave his position away. A hand to Gladio's arm usually drew him from whatever reverie he'd entered, and Gladio would hold him tight, tuck his face in against Ignis's neck, and breathe in before he let it go.

“I wish we had some streamers,” Iris lamented, when she'd given up cleaning the already clean lounge and moved on to help Ignis tidy up the kitchen. The cup noodles were waiting to one side of the counter; Iris had located some spare ribbon and tied it around them so they at least looked the part.

“Alas,” Ignis agreed. There was only himself and Iris to greet Gladio; Prompto was stuck so far to the other end of Lucis hey hadn't been able to contact him for weeks. They were only assured that he was still alive by the information creeping in from hunters returning to Lestallum. A message had gone out to him, but if Prompto had been off in the wilds somewhere encamped at a haven, there was no guarantee it would have reached him in time. Noct, of course, was wherever Noct had been for the last seven years, and party invites weren't something the messengers were accustomed to carrying. If he was going to return, Ignis found himself thinking, now would be the perfect time.“If only we could do more.”

“Yeah,” Iris murmured. Then she brightened, and Ignis suspected it was for his benefit. “Noct is gonna have to make it up to him _big time_.”

Ignis couldn't help but laugh. “Indeed,” he answered, “and we shall make sure he does.”

“We'll have a huge party,” Iris went on. “Just for Gladdy.”

With the kitchen cleaned and the cake turned out and cooling, there wasn't much else to do but wait. Iris tired of her pacing and turned the radio on, switching over from the usual hunter's broadcast Ignis used to keep up to date with the state of the world to the only music station left in Lestallum. Hope FM played an eclectic mix of everything, and was run by a collection of refugees. They'd argued like hell with Cor and Dave for the broadcasting equipment and been told it wasn't a priority, but others, like Gladio, had pointed out that keeping people's spirits up was as important as killing daemons, so their request had eventually been granted.

The music the station played was whatever they could get their hands on. It often switched from jazz to bubblegum pop without warning. Ignis had found the mix of genres to be charming, and the defiance to be uplifting, but it was always Gladio that put it on when he was home. Occasionally he'd pull Ignis away from whatever he was doing to hold him in his arms and dance with him to the strains of some rock from his father's era, which was inevitably followed by the noisy beat of some electronic mix.

Something Ignis remembered Noct and Prompto having liked to listen to in the Regalia was playing when the door finally opened. “Gladdy!” Iris's excited voice was nearly a shriek, and the sofa heaved as she jumped up and her boots pelted the floor. The sound of her jumping into her brother's arms was unmistakable, as was Gladio's surprised grunt and strain as he caught her weight.

“Did you get bigger?” he asked.

“Pretty soon I'll be able to bench press you,” Iris answered.

Ignis rose to his feet more slowly, honing in on the sound of Gladio's voice and approaching at a more sedate pace. He heard Gladio put his sister down, and then Ignis slipped into the space she had occupied, sliding his arms up over Gladio's shoulders and looping them around his neck before he leaned in for a deep kiss.

Gladio inhaled sharply, and then all but purred as he melted into Ignis's arms, folding Ignis into his embrace and teasing his tongue against Ignis's. The room fell away from Ignis's notice. Gladio was solid and warm against his chest, and back where he belonged in the safety of Ignis's arms.

Iris cleared her throat, pointedly, next to them. “You might want to save some for later,” she said.

Ignis smiled as he broke away from Gladio's mouth. “Don't worry,” he told her, without turning away from Gladio, “there's plenty more where that came from.”

Gladio's arms stayed coiled around Ignis's back, and his happiness was obvious in his voice as he asked, “It my birthday or something?”

Ignis's smile widened. “I do believe it is,” he answered.

“Wait, seriously?” Gladio asked, his tone changing from happy and flirtatious to genuinely surprised.

Ignis slipped his hand down Gladio's chest, resting his palm against one solid pectoral and tilted his head to listen to Gladio's voice. His confusion didn't sound like an act.

“You _forgot_?” Iris demanded.

Gladio shifted. Ignis could feel every twitch of his body language as he shuffled his feet. “It's really today?” Gladio asked.

“Oh my god you actually forgot,” Iris replied, seemingly tangled in a mix of amusement and annoyance.

“Gladio?” Ignis asked, unsure whether he should be concerned or amused.

Gladio shrugged, sounding a little abashed when he said, “Each day kinda blends into the next. I knew it was coming,” he added, defensively, “I just didn't realise it was today.”

Ignis sighed and stepped closer once more, sliding his hand up to find Gladio's cheek, the coarse stubble of his beard indicating it was overdue a trim. He stroked his thumb over the crest of Gladio's cheekbone, feeling the tiny line carved by the scar that ran down Gladio's eye. “What are we to do with you?” he asked.

Gladio tilted his head into Ignis's hand. “Well I'm guessing you had something planned?” he pointed out, a lilt in his voice that gave away his amusement.

Ignis smiled at him again. “Indeed,” he answered. “I'm afraid it's not much,” he admitted, wishing even more fervently that they could have gathered more people, and more food, and more decorations for the day.

Gladio's arm left Ignis's waist, and then Ignis heard the sound of Iris being pulled in next to him. Her warmth was crushed in to Ignis's side as Gladio drew them together. “Hey,” Gladio answered, tugging them both tight into himself in another hug, “you two are all I need.”


End file.
